Ayon CD-2 sonics? thoughts? opinions?

I do not know offhand if the Gabriel Gold was used at the show. The information I obtained on the room I posted a pic of in my CES report was that Ayon used the Clarity Cable power conditioner and the Echole Cables. Whether Gabriel Gold was used in that room I do not know, or if at all at this show. Contact Charlie Harrison at USA Tube Audio and he may be able to tell you.

I have not compared the CD-1S with the CD-2. I suppose it is conceivable that the single ended output would be similar, but I have serious reservations about that. My guess is it would be more a case of wishful thinking, "Oooh, I could get the performance of a $5.5K player for half the cost..." It certainly would not be wise of Ayon to make a player that was identical in single ended output on two players at big price differences. Ayon has never done so in the past, why now? What motivation would Ayon have to undercut their primo player with a nearly identical one?

In casual observation I see several differences in the specs, including tube complement, D/A conversion and number of transformers. In my thinking just the tube complement alone would be enough to substantially change the performance, let alone differences in the D/A conversion. I'm not going to spend the time going back to research it, but it seems to me that the CD-1 and CD-3 units shared a lot of similar specs as well, and they were separated by quite a wide margin in terms of performance. I certainly would not anticipate these two (CD-1s and CD-2) to be identical in single ended performance. It looks like the transport and some of the topology is similar, but that's a long way from identical.

FWIW, the impression I got from Paul at USA Tube Audio is that the CD-1S is designed to be lower cost and slightly lower performance than even the CD-1. Although the CD-1 is now discontinued in Europe, I believe Paul told me Ayon intends to sell the CD-1 in the US for a bit longer.

I suppose what is implied here is that the CD-2 will be vastly superior to the CD-1S.

An additional thought; I have not found the sound of an economical sibling player used as transport to be identical to the more expensive model when shunted through a DAC. Though the laser assembly is identical in many cases, the difference in topology is such that the performance is significantly different (let's say, with $40K rigs as a baseline) even when the player is operating as a transport. Whether such differences are worth it to you - well, that's your call.

Questions such as:

Will the performance of the less expensive player operating as a transport exceed that of its internal DAC? (possibly, depending on external DAC and Digital cable)

Will such a CD1S with external DAC exceed performance of the CD-2? (Doubtful; you may come closer, but then you're spending nearly the cost of the CD-2)

My guess is that the CD1S with the Cambridge Audio DAC Magic might be a really fun, good performing combo. It's a combo I might try if I had the time. You might end up finding that it's not significantly better than the CD-1S alone. It's extremely difficult to cobble together economical sources which are hugely better than a primo cdp.

Absolute answers to such questions would only be found by actually doing the comparisons.

Douglas
Here's a thought running a high quality digital cable out of the CD2's digital output and back into the CD2's Digital input.
I tried this with a Krell KPS 20I before and it was interesting to hear how different digital cables sounded looping them thru the unit.

It was almost like I had a great 1 box player and and great seperates too!
I actually tweaked the unit with a digital cable that I liked best and 90% of the time listed to it looped.
Every Digital cable sounded so different it was baffling.

So for the cost of a used digital cable you can have some
fun.

Most people might use the digital in on the CD1S or CD2 as a Dac for their server.
just thinking out loud.
bobf

Never heard of this; I'm going to discuss with Ayon.